La Teta Asustada
Peru
2009, colour, 95 min
22 Jun 2010 - 22:00
Open-Air Amphitheatre
A film made by the Peruvian director Claudia Llosa (Lima, 1976), whose plot is based on the fact that the young Fausta (Magaly Solier) believes in the legend that she is infected with a rare disease known as the "milk of sorrow", transmitted through fear and suffering by means of the mother’s milk, because her own mother was raped by terrorists during a very difficult period in modern Peruvian history, in the 1980s.
Based on this story, the director develops a narrative that is grounded in the ambiguous mechanisms of distance and proximity, which completely condition the behaviour of the leading character. Keeping a distance in order to preserve her autonomy, her fragile sense of security, her individual resources as a person and a worker; seeking proximity in relation to the community to which she belongs, the popular rites of identification, the stunning beauty of nature. A film that is filled with delightful images and enjoys an excellent performance by Magaly Solier. The Milk of Sorrow won the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin festival in 2009, and it has since been selected as a candidate for an Oscar for best foreign film in 2010.